Reclamations

The Great Breach

The only record which survives of large-scale engineering before the
arrival of the Portuguese is that of the remnants of a massive stone
causeway across the Flats on the island of Bombay. These Flats were the
low-lying lands between Dongri and Malabar hills, seperated from the
island of Worli by the Great Breach, through which the sea poured in
at high tide.

Pydhonie and Umarkhadi

The Great Breach may have extended almost to
Umarkhadi, the creek
seperating Bombay from
Mazagaon. Occasionally the two would be linked
by a shallow creek at the site of the crowded present-day bazaar area
of Pydhonie. Only the
name, which means "foot wash", now gives a clue to the fact
that it was once a creek, because this was probably the first
piece of land to be reclaimed from the sea.

Quite as likely, Umarkhadi
was also filled in soon after the arrival of the British and joined
Mazagaon irretrievably
to Bombay. The last story in which
Mazagaon appears
as a seperate island relates to its occupation by the
Sidi of Janjira in 1690-1.
He was repelled by a rag-tag navy of fishermen led by the amateur
Parsi admiral Rustomji Dorabji.

The Hornby Vellard

Early efforts at land reclamation concentrated on the small creeks
crossing the northern Flats of Bombay island. Several of these were
dammed or filled in during the eighteenth century. As a result, the
areas north and east of
Umarkhadi and Mazagaon
were slowly settled in this period. However, the next major reclamation
was due to the closure of the Great Breach north of Cumballa Hill in 1784
by the building of a sea-wall called the
Hornby Vellard.
The wall allowed reclamation of the Flats and supplied about 400 acres of
land for the extension of the crowded
inner city.
The precincts of Mahalaxmi,
Kamathipura, Tardeo and parts of
Bycullah were settled.

Colaba and Old Woman's Island

The fort area and the older parts of the Indian town were extremely
crowded by the beginning of the nineteenth century. The rich English and
Parsi merchants had already moved to the new suburbs of
Mazagaon and
Bycullah. In 1796, the
island of Colaba was declared
a cantonment area, and civilians were refused permission to build there.
As boat traffic to Colaba increased over the next few decades and many
people perished due to overloaded boats capsizing, the need for a Causeway
became evident. The Colaba Causeway was completed in 1838, and used
Old Woman's island as a stepping stone to Colaba.

The First Backbay Reclamation Scheme

The first Backbay
Reclamation Company was formed during the boom
years of the early 1860's, with the stated purpose of reclaiming the
whole of Backbay, from the tip of
Malabar Hill to the
end of Colaba. When the
American Civil War ended in 1865, a depression set in and land prices
fell. The company went bankrupt and was liquidated. The government
took over the narrow strip of land that had been created and gave it to the
BB&CI Railways
for the purpose of laying a line from Churchgate to their new terminus
in Colaba.

The Dockyards

The Backbay reclamation was a major fiasco. The real work took place on
the eastern shore of Bombay. All the way from the Sassoon Docks in the
south to Sewri in the north,
land reclamation proceeded all through the second half of the nineteenth
century and well into the twentieth.

The Elphinstone Land and Press Company was formed in 1858 to reclaim
250 acres of land from Apollo Bunder to
Mazagaon, and a further
100 acres at Bori Bunder, to be given to the GIP Railways for building a
the Victoria Terminus.
The company went bankrupt with the 1865 crash, and their equipment, along
with the already reclaimed land, was given over to the newly-formed
Bombay Port Trust in 1873.
By the mid 1880's the reclamations were complete, and wet and dry docks
had been built.

Early Twentieth Century

The Port Trust continued its
work well into the Twentieth century. Between 1914 and 1918 it completed
building a dry dock and used the excavated earth to create the 22 acre
Ballard Estate. In
the meanwhile another ill-advised
Backbay reclamation
had gone the way of the first. However, this created the land on which one
of the city's most well-known landmarks was built-- the Marine Drive. The
Art Deco buildings
west of the Oval Maidan also stand on land reclaimed by this scheme.

Late Twentieth Century

The Independence did not bring reclamation work to an end. The third
Backbay reclamation
scheme was put into effect and yielded the small acreage on which the
high-rises of Nariman Point and Cuffe Parade are planted. The Naval Dockyards
were reclaimed on the east, and smaller works were continued further north.
A series of Supreme Court injunctions protecting the shoreline and access to
it for fishermen have slowed such work since the 1970's. In the late 1990's
the Supreme Court has further restricted reclamations by setting up
Coastal Regulatory Zones.